Intermedial Inter-Asia and the Beginnings of Modern Art in Cambodia

Abstract

Modern art may emerge through intermedial and inter-Asia encounters. Focusing on these entwined qualities of inter-Asia intermediality enables novel perspectives on the development of modern art in Southeast Asia, which go beyond dominant nationalist art historiography (which typically emphasises indigenous individuals and institutions, and stresses independence as an art-historical turning point) and instead contribute to decolonial regionalist art histories. Drawing on archival sources and artworks, this article reveals that in Cambodia, modern art techniques such as drawing and painting from life were first taught by the “Vietnamese artist” Tô Ngọc Vân and the “Japanese artist” Suzuki Shigenari, during the 1930s and 1940s, before Cambodia won independence in 1953. These were inter-Asia exchanges, rather than instances of “transfer” from coloniser to colonised. Tô and Suzuki were also probably the first “Asian artists” to depict the temples of Angkor in oil on canvas: their works are intermedial citations of three-dimensional architecture and sculpture in two-dimensional paintings. Their Cambodian students, including Sam Yoeun, later made paintings of musicians during the 1950s and early 1960s, which display striking intermedial reflexivity, and circulated internationally during the independence era. By focusing on inter-Asia intermediality, this article decentres European artists and offers interdisciplinary concepts for decolonizing historical discussions of modern art in Southeast Asia, including through a renewed focus on transnational artistic interactions within the region. Discussions of this under-studied art and history are interspersed with reflections on the historiography of Asia’s modern art, including as it intersects with emerging theories of global art histories.